✅ Monday briefing: WaddsCon, media intelligence, show not tell, Minecraft campaign, COVID-19 comms, media manipulation, Twitter trends, autocue apps, and more…

Industry, media, research and insight, social media and platforms, tools and events

This newsletter is crowdsourced each week from my blog and Lockdown Facebook community.

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Thanks to the speakers and everyone who attended the inaugural WaddsCon. It’ll be back at 1-2pm on Friday, 26 March. Please follow this link for details and to grab a ticket. 

Industry

🛒 MEDIA INTELLIGENCE GIANT: Social media listening platform Brandwatch has been acquired by Cision for $450M. Cision has a media contact database of approximately a million journalists and media outlets. Spotted Philippe Borremans.

💪 IPRA ESSAY: The public relations discipline has emerged stronger from COVID-19 but needs to build on its legacy from the crisis with innovation in education, learning and development. Communities of practice provide a potential solution. Source Stephen Waddington.

Media

⏮️ MEDIA CODE: Facebook will restore news to users in Australia in the next few days after Facebook and Google agreed to pay publishers for displaying their content. It’s a move that is expected to have ramifications for copyright in other markets. Spotted: Sarah Waddington and Andrew Smith.

📉 REGIONAL NEWSPAPERS: The UK’s regional print daily newspapers saw circulations fall by an average of 18% in the second half of 2020. The hardest-hit daily was the Manchester Evening News which saw its circulation fall year-on-year by 46% between July and December. Spotted Alan Morrison. 

Practice

🚬 BLOWING SMOKE: A Bureau of Investigative Journalism report criticised BAT for targeting its products at young people, often in developing markets using emerging forms of media and influencers. Source Stephen Waddington.

👦🏾 SHOW NOT TELL: If you're going to lobby on issues such as diversity make sure you've got your own house in order. The Investment Association demanded this week that boardrooms “reflect the diversity of modern-day Britain” and yet it has no diversity on its 17-person board. Spotted Sarah Waddington.

🎮 MINECRAFT CAMPAIGN: The Cairngorms have been recreated in the video game Minecraft to help young people understand how to run a national park. The virtual world, in which players can build anything using blocks, covers all 1,700 sq miles including parts of Highland, Moray, Aberdeenshire and Perthshire. Spotted Alan Morrison.

Research and insight

📮 COVID-19 COMMS POSTCARD: The power of partnership, data and behaviour and inside stories are three lessons from COVID-19 in Ross Wigham’s latest postcard. Stories told well via owned channels cut through. Source Ross Wigham.

📕 MEDIA MANIPULATION CASEBOOK: The Media Manipulation Casebook is a digital research platform that combines theory, methods and practice for mapping media manipulation and disinformation campaigns. It is an initiative from the Technology and Social Change Project at Harvard. Spotted David Gallagher.

🔬 MEDIA CONSUMPTION: Television, audio and social media are booming in the UK according to The YouGov International Media Consumption Report 2021. It reports high usage of social media among adults: Facebook (72%), Instagram (38%), Pinterest (14%) and Twitter (30%). Spotted Stephen Waddington.

👥 VIRTUAL COMMUNITY REPORT: People can experience a strong sense of community from membership in online groups despite a lack of physical proximity. Groups typically exist outside traditional power structures, institutions and governance. These are among findings from a report called the Power of Virtual Communities by the Governance Lab. Spotted Alan Morrison.

Social media and platforms

💬 TWITTER TRENDS: Wellbeing, wonder, creator culture, sustainability, tech and personal identity are six Twitter trends for brands on Twitter. The latest conversation report from Twitter suggests a strong correlation between brand relevance and revenue. Spotted Andrew Smith.

🐤 TWITTER CREATOR SUBSCRIPTION: Twitter is following creator platforms such as OnlyFans and newsletter apps such as Substack in building a paid subscription option for users. The move was announced on last week’s investors call and is a work in progress. Spotted Stephen Canning.

Tools

📠 AUTOMATIC TRANSCRIPTION: Happy Scribe and Otter are transcription platforms that enable audio or videos to be uploaded and transcribed to text. The tools both use state-of-the-art machine-learning models. Spotted Stuart Bruce. 

🎭 AUDIENCE INTELLIGENCE: Social listening platform Pulsar is an alternative to Brandwatch that works with first and third party data. It has two neat features: the ability to identify and manage audience segments in the way you would manage a focus group and machine-trained AI apps aligned to industries to interrogate data sets. Spotted Stephen Waddington.

🎥 AUTOCUE APPS: BIGVU is a teleprompter and video production tool. It is available as app and desktop web versions. Spotted Stuart Bruce.

Events

📅 WADDSCON MARCH: Thanks to the speakers and everyone who attended the inaugural WaddsCon. It’ll be back at 1-2pm on Friday, 26 March with topics including the opportunity for PR as we learn to live with COVID-19, qualitative research, SEO PR and search listening. Grab yourself a ticket or submit a pitch if you’re interested in speaking at a future event.